Archive for November, 2010

In the dot-com boom I made a little bit of money and then proceeded to make every mistake possible with that money. It was like reading a Stephen King horror story written in blood across your bank statement. Several years later, I included the story in the intro to one of my books and gave the book to a potential investor. He read the intro and said, “I can’t invest in you. You’re a functional idiot.” And yet, I’ve seen the pattern repeated so many times with so many people can I at least enjoy the company of other idiots?

Christine Cardinal and I had adjoining paper routes and when we were finished, we’d invariably meet on the line between her route and mine. So one day, in tenth grade, I asked her out. Because, of course, I loved her. She said “yes”. That evening I was so happy I even told my little sister something like, “you are going to have a great life”. Because, of course, if Christine Cardinal was going to say yes to someone like me then all was good in the world and flowers were going to rain down on everyone.

After a failure I feel lonely and afraid. Its hardest at these moments to pick yourself up and give a little in order to get. The only way to climb out of the hole, when you have a metaphoric needle sticking out of your veins and you’re lying in the gutter that the world has kicked you to, is to give back without asking, give as if you were the richest man in the world.

This is not the same as giving to charity. There are so many other ways to give that are underappreciated. But its exactly these types of giving where the world will give you back ten times more than you gave.

OMG, you whispered something to someone who whispered to somebody on the subway and a guy overheard and made a trade and NOW YOU ARE ALL GOING TO JAIL! What the heck is happening? Every fund in the world is being raided, people are being threatened on the eve of Thanksgiving with prosecution, and all we want to do is just relax and get back to being scammed in this rigged market. Why are these billionaires even risking jail with at the very least a very gray area of the law is the main question I have. But first, should insider trading even be illegal?